A Different Future
by Boneos
Summary: What would the future look like if Booth didn't survive the surgery? Here's a small glimpse from Brennan's perspective.


**May 7, 2010**

It has been a year already. It feels as though time has stopped. It's as if it were only yesterday I walked down that hallway with him.

Before I thought I knew the pain of abandonment. I thought I was familiar with the gaping void left when someone important was ripped from your life. I had survived losing both my parents and the alienation of my brother. I grew up in a system that had no time to care for me. Foster parents who abused me in unspeakable ways. All of this was nothing. There is no way to describe what I feel now. What time has not even begun to heal.

I walk through my days now a hollow shell. I thought I lived a life with no feeling before, but I was wrong. I know now what it is to truly feel and the feeling of true emptiness. The day he died I felt more than I thought ever possible. The walls I had so carefully built crumbled and the floods of pain swept me up in their vicious current. After months of drowning I found purchase once again in reality, the devastating agony giving way to a dull ache. Now I am left with emptiness.

Is this what they call healing? They say there are seven stages to grief. I'm sure if I cared to listen they would carefully explain that I was on the fourth stage, depression. Surely that's impossible. I am incapable of recovery. I'm not even sure I want to. Would I forget him if I healed? What a ridiculous thought. I would sooner forget the earth revolved around the sun than forget Seeley Booth.

How ironic that now I find poetry in my pain. My life held poetry before but I didn't realize until too late. Having him ripped from me opened my eyes. He was my sun. And moon. It all was encompassed in him. There is no other explanation for it. How else could I explain being able to survive the loss of my entire family but be left gaping and empty by the loss of one man?

**May 7, 2011**

Another year has passed. This one I felt. It's a new experience, feeling. I no longer walk through my days hiding behind facts and evidence afraid to engage the world. I am a different person. I still ache for him. I ache for the life we did not share. I realize now ignoring my feelings didn't stop me from creating emotional attachments. I scoffed before at sayings warning us of the heart taking what it wants. Now I understand.

I have decided it is time to use the piece of Seeley he left behind. His dying wish. I took so much for granted before, but I have decided to never again pass the chance at a miracle. I will face my future without 'what ifs'. I ask that question too much already. The child I wish to create should have been with him here. But since life seemed destined to continue though my center was gone I understand now that I must face the future. And as always he was my future.

This must be the seventh stage. That would mean my grieving is over. My healing is complete. Then why does it feel as if a piece of me is still missing? There's still a hollow feeling in my chest. It no longer consumes me as it once did, but it is there nonetheless. Nonetheless. Everything still reminds me of him. Now instead of falling into the open maw of darkness I smile. A small token gesture of remembrance.

I talk to him often. I allow myself to pretend for a moment he is here and I feel better. I see myself as he saw me. I am successful for having had him in my life. I did not realize then the lessons he taught me. He was subtle in his way. Why didn't I appreciate that then? I know now how right he was about everything. Even though we never realized our true potential, he was right. It was worth it, and everything around it was worth it.

**May 7, 2012**

How fitting that today is his daughter's birthday. He would appreciate that. He would love the irony that this day is now overshadowed by the joy of her birth. I can no longer mourn this date. I feel the hole in my heart shrink.

My life has new meaning, a new center. A future I face with a smile. As I embrace my new daughter I embrace life. I'm naming her Seeley, Seeley Brennan-Booth. Now she will carry him with her. I see him in her. Seeley means blessed. I am blessed for having had him in my life and I am now blessed to have his daughter.

Feeling the joy of this moment I once again dream of him here welcoming her with me. I often fantasized during my pregnancy of him with me, watching his child swell within me, joining me in the wonder of her development. To think raising his child on my own was once a dream. The reality now is only overshadowed by his absence. At least on the terms I wished for before he would have been there with me. Oh I wish now for the luxury of my ignorance.

I held her for the first time only hours ago but it feels as though a lifetime has passed. I can't remember not knowing her. I can't remember not knowing him. I realize now that what I have felt is love. I now have a comparison by which to base my conclusion. My world revolves around her. She is my sun. My moon.

Fear grips me as I face a new truth. Should whatever higher being exists decide to be so cruel as to tear this life from me as it did his I will survive. I will not recover, but I will survive. I am designed to survive. There is nothing I cannot handle. Seeley Booth taught me that.


End file.
